Mapping Out NEAR Protocol's Ecosystem

NEAR Protocol is an open-source platform for decentralized applications, similar to many use-cases offered by Ethereum today. Founded in 2018 by Alexander Skidanov and Illia Polosukhin, NEAR is a shard chain that tries to solve the technical barriers associated with smart contract platforms and provide higher throughput and less costly transaction fees.

NEAR intends to position itself at the center of the universe of chains. Indeed, 2021 has been a busy year for NEAR Protocol, during which one of the major milestones for the protocol was the launching of Rainbow Bridge to allow users to transfer ERC-20 tokens between the Ethereum and NEAR blockchains. In June 2021, NEAR also joined ICON Blockchain Transmission Protocol (BTP), allowing native tokens, contract calls, and data to be sent to BTP partners, such as Polkadot, Harmony, and the BSC. NEAR Protocol team did not stop there as cross-chain compatibility was also established with Ardana, Cardano’s stablecoin hub. Additionally, Aurora, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling protocol, was launched on NEAR to increase transaction throughput and decrease costs.